


and so we burned

by scalesandfishnails



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age - Various Authors, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst, Angst and Romance, Dragon Age Spoilers, Dragon Age: Inquisition Spoilers, F/M, I'm Bad At Tagging, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Relationship(s), Romance, Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-04-03
Packaged: 2019-12-07 20:21:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 8,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18239747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scalesandfishnails/pseuds/scalesandfishnails
Summary: Cole can feel their hurt, even if they can't feel each other's.  His stream of consciousness follows their romance during the Inquisition's glory and beyond, until they find the peace, and love, they search for.





	1. i.

_And so we burned. We raised nations, we waged wars,_  
_We dreamed up false gods, great demons_  
_Who could cross the Veil into the waking world,_  
_Turned our devotion upon them, and forgot you._

_- **Threnodies 1:8**_

 

 

 

 

Glimpses of their first memories together, blue samite sky beyond their Haven.  They met beside a lake.  He was training farmers to pick up their swords and fight back, and she was still new.  New with the mark on her hand, covering all her doubts with a facetious tone.  He thought it was charming, and she was doing it to be _not_ charming.  The arrow in his shield was her skipped heartbeat, and when she turned to walk away, she stole one of his too.  He still wonders why he called after her, or – he _tells_ himself he wonders.  He knows now, though he fights it.  He fights it, and she wants it, and he can’t bear to be another weight on her shoulder.  He doesn’t know how to hurt her less.

            She dreams of Ostwick.  Eyes, everywhere, and whispers.  Senior Enchanter Lydia picks her out of a sullen room and sees her potential, but she doesn’t want to be noticed.  She wants to be caged, yet not caged.  If she’s not caged, then she’s home.  Family dinners are prayers and politics.  She hates the way her father looks her up and down, the abomination that failed to hold the Trevelyans upright.  If only she could have been good, untainted.  Grown to hold the fashionable summer balls like mother, all smiles and silks, like a mask from Orlais, only in the Free Marches.  Now the templars watch her too.  Sometimes there are whispers of forbidden romances, but she smiles in the night now, and she whispers in her mind, _but the warden’s fate is sealed, so he is most forbidden, most romantic  …_

            His mind is full, angry, like a dark storm cloud.  The face that he wears in his past isn’t the same face he wears now.  I don’t recognise him, and she wouldn’t either.  That’s why he hides it from her, and his guilt cuts him like the warden commander’s badge slicing into his palm.  He always thought she moved effortlessly through her followers, like a flower combing between fingers.  Eyes like a cool winter day, and hair that’s almost red  …  red like how the Qunari likes it, and he feels his heart clench up before he knows it’s not quite red enough, and though sometimes she smiles at the Iron Bull, she doesn’t smile like she shares with him.  She – doesn’t smile at all.  Not when he looks away, and Cassandra grows drunk and shouts, or the mages look to her like the senior enchanter did, always her potential and not the girl she is.

            She doesn’t smile when Haven burns.  He thought, for so briefly, yet for so long, that the winter swallowed her.  That it poured out of her eyes and clogged her heart, and buried her in its avalanche.  Maybe her only smile then would be to rest, and she would be free of cages and family and politics and the Maker.  He was too cold, too numb to grieve, and then they found her, dragging herself through the snow like a hurt fennec, as frail and slight as one.  He didn’t go to her when she woke.  That’s when he promised himself that he wouldn’t hurt her, not any more.  Haven’t they already done enough?

            Cold, whispering, a snowflake that leads their march.  But she leads them.  She runs before them, russet hair in the wind.  She pauses on the peak with Solas, and he watches them hold open the sky.  When she turns back, her face is soft with wonder.  He almost forgot that she was just a girl, before all this.  He promises never to forget that too.  When she finds him later, he makes an excuse to walk the walls, just so he can see her face again.  Skyhold.  It holds them together too.  She reaches for him, and he realises he’s gone too far.  He – pulls away, and her face cracks.  The wonder is gone, and there is the sharp.  She’s been hurt like this before.  He can almost hear herself say that she should have expected it.

            He hurts her.  The truth hurts her.  The lie hurts her.  To be noble, to be selfish, they all hurt her.  To be who she is; that hurts her too.

            She hardens as he watches.  Dreams of Ostwick become dreams of the Inquisition.  Do this, speak to him, appease her, but where is he now?  Hundreds, thousands of lives, dangling between her fingers like strings of rings.  To the mages, a figurehead – to everyone else, a pariah.  She was the exception until she wasn’t, and now they love and they hate.  It’s not Senior Enchanter Lydia picking her out of her solitude any more, but the world.  When she dreams now, she hopes she doesn’t return from the Fade.  She liked it better when she was the daughter of Trevelyan, and even then she hated that.  From one cage to another to another.  She is not a flake of snow, but frost.  Her voice deepens with command.  Her eyes sweep over the people below the battlements, and he sees her chin tilt up like commanders do.  His heart fills, then it breaks.  He goes to her, when he feels the ice forming over hers.  Maybe if he holds his hands out, fills his palms with it, it might – soften.  Stab the inside of her chest a little less.

            That night, she whispers against the pillow that holds her head.  The future that she’s seen holds his sacrifice at its centre stage.  Him, and Varric, with the nightingale’s last song to grant them a lullaby.  He remembers, when he asked, how innocently she had said he had not been very different at all – how, between time and space, he had just been Blackwall.  Her Blackwall.  He reaches for her, her speaking half-asleep, his hand quivering out of fear for her words.

            “You died,” she says.  “You died and the whole world changed.”


	2. ii.

The secret is that she died as well, and they both know it.  Back at the Conclave, the wisp of a girl who walked into the wrong room  …  no, the _right_ room, at the right moment, and the wrong one.  He never knew who she was.  He only sees the ghost of her now and again, when she is scared and curled into her bed, smaller than he ever thought she could be.  And she is small.  Her head peers above his shoulder, and he likes it when she smiles so wryly, knowing that he could carry her over his shoulder if he wished.  She finds that charming too, even when the others poke fun at him.  Hygiene, fashion – she even likes his beard, and he was always conscious of that.  Always conscious of how she could do better, and _she’s_ always conscious of how she does worse.

            I hear Varric tell her stories, of how they look up to her.  She bats his words away, like  …  moths, straying too near to her reading light.  Mother walks down the hallway, feet soft as slippers.  Your eyes will go poorly.  Blow out the candle now.  Sleep sweet  …  she couldn’t even obey her mother then, and she can’t seem to obey the world.  Why do they want her to exile her own kind?  Every sentence, every damnation she passes on, she passes on to herself.  Yet they don’t see, they _won’t_ see, that if she can fix them  …  if she can fix herself  …

            I tell her these things, when she isn’t – too bright.  Her eyes shine like stars, and they’re bleeding.  When I tell her I can help with the wound, she laughs and wipes her tears away.

            He – doesn’t see them.  Not yet.  He sees her bed.  He hears her nightmares.  He asks about them, when he can.  When she seems soft, enough to be Lillith, his lily, and not the herald.  She dreams about the Inquisition, but she tells him about the dreams of Ostwick instead.  She falters, because words can’t describe the bars that held her in place, and what if he laughs, or jeers?  But he has his bars too.  He doesn’t see them, but she remembers.

            He doesn’t laugh.  She likes it, when he laughs.  She likes it more when he doesn’t now.  He is sad, and the girl – the one at the Conclave – she might have tried to make him smile again.  This one, this herald, keeps quiet.  She hugs herself and waits, and when he speaks, his understanding hurts her more.  She doesn’t understand.  She thought it would help, to speak about it all.  “You deserve more than they give you.”  Her hand rises to deflect it, like she deflects Varric’s soft smile.  _He_ knows tragedies when he sees them.  “I mean it.  You deserve so much more.”

            She doesn’t.  She’s just her.  She’s just Lily.  Mother tucking her flower into the bed, pressing her lips to her cheek.  Sleep sweet, sleep sweet.  Mother, it’s too early to _ever_ get up.

            They’re – in the forest when she hears Cassandra ask him, a grave of emeralds all around, but Cassandra is always like a ruby.  Red, brazen, noble.  The lily fears her.  So alike, but – they don’t see it.  He thinks that too.  Cassandra asks him about his past, and he parries, like he learned in the melee when he was young and the sun was hot and the world was his, all his, for the taking.  The lily listens, and she thinks, she doesn’t know anything about him.  She could write him pages, she even began the chapter – but why does he never tell her of the life that came before?

            So when he asks again, she steels her elbows into her sides.  “Enough about me.”  She uses the herald’s tone, and when his brow darkens, she thinks – no, it’s too late to turn back now.  “Tell me about you.  Please.”  The last is a weakness, but she – entreats.  He considers it.  He doesn’t want to hurt her.  He _never_ wants to hurt her.

            Noble, wealthy, he could have been a chevalier.  A clean-shorn prince upon his steed, and he would sweep her away to the horizon with fluttering silks and a joyful tear shed behind every masquerade.  Her family would gaze in wonder.  A match by the Maker’s hand, they’d whisper.  Now, they whisper in the hall of a scandal.  She turns her head away, but he listens and his cheeks burn.

            Please.  She says please.  He can’t look her in the eyes, and it doesn’t help that he sees the snows of Haven inside them, like a scar that won’t move.  She resigns herself – ties a ribbon of silence about her throat.  If he wants her, shallow, he can have her.  It’s silly to expect more, even if it burns behind her eyes and melts all the snows.  Then – he speaks.  “You saw me die.  I thought I saw you die too.  When we held the line before the chantry and the beast flew overhead – I thought that was your last.”  The tears come fast, but they are silent, and he still won’t look.  “You think the world changed for you, but it changed for me too.  It changed when I met you, and I cannot – I _will_ not lose you.”

            Is that how he apologises?  She feels the fool.  It shouldn’t be so much, to know someone like they know you, but it wouldn’t be her first mistake.  She reaches for his hand, and when he looks up to see the tears, she is smiling too.

            “Maybe it doesn’t have to be that way.”  It makes her sound young again, on the inside.

            She thinks of death.  I feel it follow her like a bride’s veil.  I hide myself in the Herald’s Rest, and I watch her cross the floor from side to side, death sweeping the boards like mother’s dressing gown.  They think she is sure, but she isn’t, until she is.  _Viuus Anaxas_.  It’s not his name, and at first I don’t know why she thinks it so frequently – but then I do.  She holds the jewelled skull in her mind, and she blurs the lines between life and death.  If she softens them, it will hurt less.  His sacrifice won’t be so irreversible in that future that never was.  Her sacrifice could never happen.  Stronger.  Harder.  Colder.  If she makes life her pawn, then she won’t be _life’s_ pawn.

            She won’t be anyone’s pawn.

            Mother’s face when she left for the Circle.  Father, cold like the bone beneath her fingers.  They always wanted her to be an abomination, to make it easier.  But this isn’t abominable – this, this is ancient.  They’re revered, death mages, royalty, kings and queens.  Their magic _respects_ the dead, it doesn’t _hurt_ them.  Didn’t Cassandra mention once, her uncle?  How terrible could it be?  How beautiful, to triumph beyond death?

            The air grows thinner, cold.  We hold our breaths.  There’s mention of a Grey Warden in Crestwood.  His mind becomes a storm again.  The grey is paper-thin on his shoulders.  If he moves too much, the mask might split.  The herald clutches her staff.  I can do this.  I can do this.

            I won’t die.  He won’t die.  _We_ won’t die.


	3. iii.

Crestwood, rotten petrichor.  The waves crash on the periphery, and they are – always in each other’s periphery.  Death hangs heavy.  He takes note of how she treats it differently, now.  When they fight, side by side against the undead, sometimes her pallor takes their same hue.  There is the smoke of horror before the glimpse vanishes.  Distant screams and nightmares.  Then the dead are dead again, and she walks ahead, purpose.  Small and large.  Two people in a body.  Sera cracks jokes, and if she doesn’t, he thinks the air would be too heavy for any of them.  The Inquisition drive the bad men from the fort, seal the breaches beneath the lake.  Ghosts of time past and – dead ones.  Loved ones.  It takes days.  Days in the miserable wet, and they can’t stop shivering, not unless they’re around each other.

            They play a game, in the starless nights.  They touch a part of their bodies, and they tell each other to name a story to it.  It’s how they compromise, after he couldn’t look her in the eyes, and she couldn’t not forgive him.  When he touches her arm, she says sometimes, when she was little, her father would grab her by the wrist until she said sorry, sorry, sorry.  She never thought there would be a cage worse, and then the Circle happened.  Dreams of Ostwick again.  She remembers how she felt before, and she doesn’t know if she wants to tell him.  She touches his shoulder, rough and heavy and coiled to wait.  His eyes never leave her face, even if she doesn’t want to notice it.  He tells her about the darkspawn ambush.  Cold hand grips his armour, drags him down.  The ground slips, his feet stick with sweat in his boots.  She closes her eyes to imagine it, and he counts the veins in her eyelids.

            She’s so _pretty_.  He’s said that out loud.  Her face never got her much at home or in the Circle.  She doesn’t know if there are any stories to tell about it.  He touches her mouth.  She says she either speaks too much or too little, nothing in between.  A cut from the paper’s edge.  She cracks a joke about blood magic and the senior enchanter brings the ruler down over her knuckles.  Better to say less.  How can the herald say nothing at all?  He – laughs, and it’s a reward for speaking after all.

            “I know what it’s like to be mouthy,” he says.  “Got myself into a fair share of trouble, in my youth.”  She smiles again – sees him without the beard, the hair tamed.  He squabbles with Liddy, brother and sister.  Each other’s worst enemy, yet also the best friend.  Her ghost drifts with the phantoms of Crestwood, and his laugh fades away.  “It’s the mouthy ones you miss the most.”

            “How do you mean?” she asks.  His voice is low like secrets, and it’s almost like he’s opening a door to let her inside.

            “You remember the daft jokes.  The witty jibes, the loud laughs.  They’re what keep you going in places like this.”  He pulls his arms around her, like doing so might protect her from – disappearing, like Liddy.  Going someplace that she doesn’t belong, where he can’t reach.

            There are wardens in the rain.  She thinks they’re the dead until she hears their armour sing in the downpour.  He keeps his head down, pretending it’s the storm above and not within.  Maybe if Hawke’s friend is a wanted man – maybe it’s not wrong, to be who he is; what he is.  His heart stops when she looks at him, when she asks if he hears the deep earth’s song, like Stroud says.  Orlesian bastard, standing proud, watching him.  Jealous.  He’s jealous.  Stroud is true, but – I don’t recognise him when he feels this way.

            Liddy watches from between the raindrops.  He can see the disappointment in her eyes.

            In camp, he holds the herald tightly so she doesn’t look into his face.  She asks him, what does it sound like?  Will he go?  Does it pull him away?  Why doesn’t it?  He silences her.  Where his fingers touched her mouth before, he moves to kiss her.  His beard is rough on her cheek, ticklish, she wants to laugh _and_ cry.  Like the brush of bramble across her throat, her chest, down, down, her thighs –

            Crestwood is cold, but not when they’re together.


	4. iv.

She cries in one of the empty rooms along the battlements where she thinks no-one will find her.  This is – my memory, as well as hers.  She frightens me.  Her magic grows  …  cruel, more and more, taking parts that aren’t parts, that could be _wholes_ – and I’m not the only one.  He worries for her, and he allows her to convince him it’s for the greater good.  We all tell ourselves, it’s for the greater good.  Like the wardens.  Like – Hawke, who stepped into the nightmare for a brighter future.  Varric smiles, though inside I can see that his blood, red, like the lyrium, burns with a guilt that he will never be able to erase away.  I think he knows too, that she doesn’t mean it, her empty face.  Her square shoulders as she watches sacrifice after sacrifice.  The champion, the Divine  …  the girl who wanted to help the wardens so, for the greater good.  What was her name?  Maker, why had she never asked her name  …

            She frightens me, but not now.  I wanted her to feel all the hurt they caused, but I realise she already does.  I – I would take away her pain, but I am afraid of being like the nightmare.  Of taking, of – of feeding.  She had said it almost seemed a kindness.  I think she believes it, now.  The little Trevelyan girl, always in her books.  The sun kisses the grasses around home, and the stains on the hem of her gown will be washed away come morning.  Her father’s voice deep, echoes – the nightmare speaks in his voice too, and she wants to tuck her knees into her chest and  …  fade away.  Fade away.

            I tell her, “It’s not true.  You’re worth – something.  He does love you, and the others too.  Even if Cassandra doesn’t understand – she _understands_.  Varric doesn’t blame you.  The champion _wanted_ to fight for you.”

            She looks at me.  Her eyes are  …  so tired.  I wonder if they have ever not been that way.  Cage after cage after cage, but usually the bars only pressed into _her_ skin.  Only hurt _her_.  Her mistakes were her own, and she could live with them.  Now, her mistakes take away from others.

            “He’d come to you, if you asked.  You only need to ask.”

            “What is he, Cole?”

            Goading, arrogant, her father’s voice, the nightmare’s voice.  There’s nothing like a grey warden, and _you’re_ no grey warden.  Her trust is – thin, like the spider’s webs that cocooned the Fade.  Her feet sweep close to her tomb, beside his.  Himself, and Failure.  I can’t say.  I can’t – look.  He won’t let me look, at what he is.  He won’t let _himself_ look at what he is.

            “What is any of this, then?”  Her voice is rising.  Her cold winter’s eyes, the ones that send a chill down his spine time and again, burn like veilfire.  Hot, and cold, and ancient, and young.  “I didn’t ask for any of it.  I didn’t want to _be_ any of it.  What does it matter, what I become, if I can’t bring any of them back?  If I can’t stop them from dying?”

            The champion in the nightmare.  The nightingale’s last breath.  Varric tossed to the floor in a future that never happened.  Him, the man she loves, trailing blood as Alexius’ demons drag his carcass through the door.  She never wanted to hurt anyone.  She never wanted to _give_ death, only to relieve it.  But I can see it changing inside of her; breaking, shattering.  Her resolve pieces itself back together strangely, in a way that hurts.  Hurt them.  Hurt them.  Hurt them before they can hurt _them_.  Hurt them.  I – reach out for her.  She recoils.

            “You can’t.  You can’t take the fears away.  I took them all back, remember?  The nightmare stole them, and then I stole them back.”

            She doesn’t trust any of them.  She doesn’t trust herself.  He waits for her that night, but she never comes to the bed.  She sits in that empty room and weeps and weeps.  The night can go on without the herald, at least for a little while.  I make sure they don’t disturb her.

            I’m – sorry.


	5. v.

The air is still when the morning comes, like waiting on a bated breath.  Days in Skyhold are pale, white stone on cornflower sky on gold dust, crystallising in the sun rays.  They drape over her like a blanket – I found one, a covering for the old chairs in the kitchen, and I wondered at the slimness of her shoulder when I laid it down.  Fingers pinching hard enough to bruise skin, stand straight or father will count each slouching vertebrae.  It wasn’t darkspawn, like him, that had her shoes stick to her heels.  She has no right, to suffer, to weep, when each step she takes is mounted with heads.  She dreams of flies in her eyes.  Maggots crawl up her throat when she starts to sob, or laugh.  I wonder if she still feeds the nightmare, morsel after morsel, just like she takes back from the Fade.

            Time _can_ stand still.  Sometimes, it should.

            He finds her, and I let him, once the night has become hers and the morning makes itself.  I think time will start again when he puts his hard palm to the door, but it doesn’t.  His heart becomes mine, _pounding_ against my chest.  She must be cold, the floor is unforgiving.  Why didn’t she come?  Of course she wouldn’t come.  Should I step inside?  Will I wake her?  He thinks he’s alone, but I stay and watch like  …  one of the flies from her eyes.  I tell myself I don’t feed, but sometimes I need hope too.  She rouses with a frown, even though he is gentle with his touch.  He is bent over her, and even like that, crouching, he protects more than Skyhold’s walls ever could.

            “You’re shivering.”  His voice is tender like a bruise.  It bruises her too.  How do you handle softness when your hands have been fists all your life?  “Come, let me help you up.”  His fingers on her shoulder don’t pinch.  Father is in the past, where the meadows are and the grass stains and the ache in her back from standing too straight.  No – the ache in her back from sleeping on the floor.  She counts the moments leading up.  Hawke disappearing beneath the nightmare’s shadow.  Of course she shivers.  “Is this where you’ve been, all night?  I was worried for you.”

            She doesn’t answer.  What is worry?  A hundred heads in the courtyard.  Two hundred.  Three.  Gleaming points of helmets, the ram battering against Adamant’s door –

            “Hey.”  His palm is against her cheek.  It smells like the wood he whittles.  The hay from the stables.  It smells like him.  “Come back to me.  Look at me.”  His brow has survived every shift of the weather.  Tanned from the sun, creases where the raindrops hit.  Frost from the past, and – warmth, from the present.  The future.  His eyes comb over her face, soft green like the meadows.  She could get lost in them too, spread her arms out and fall into their pillow like she did the grass as a child.  “You’ve been crying.”

            He’s been pacing, wall to wall of her bedchamber.  His thoughts roil.  He doesn’t give a damn if it isn’t appropriate, but if he chases her, does he leave her too little room?  He can tell that she knows – something isn’t right.  Does she resent him?  Was this all too good to be true?  A thousand doubts, ramming down his own door, his heart.  He pockets them.  They’re – nothing.  Ants, and her doubts are mountains.

            Lillith blinks.  Eyes cornflower like the pale sky.  Winter, he thinks, shouldn’t be so comforting.

            “I’ve suffered the least.”  Her voice flat, from waking, but he knows she’s never been one to bleed into her words.  Always kept in check, every heartbeat, every emotion.  Father never helped, but neither did Ostwick.  Nothing’s more dangerous than a mage with a rabid heart.  “I must have been tired, that’s all.”  He’s not convinced.  She doesn’t think anyone would be.

            “A good number of us walked into the Fade.  One of us didn’t get back out.  That doesn’t mean we don’t carry the weight of it all.  If our herald isn’t allowed to suffer, what example do we learn from her?”  She almost smiles.  It’s – like him, to centre the world on her, and her needs.

            “A proper one,” she answers.  “A strong one.”

            “Bollocks.”  His voice is rough.  It clashes with the room, all pretty in repose, untouched by anything that isn’t soft like the dust.  She likes him that way.  “You’re only human.  You’ve said that yourself, time and again.  Didn’t think anyone was listening, did you?”

            “You do.  You always do.”

            Time stands still.  It isn’t the herald and the warden, any more.  It’s – Lillith, Lily, and Blackwall – a name, from the past, hovering near the surface.  It could be hers, if he only opens his mouth.  If he only dares to be brave.  She smiles.  “Now who’s gone far away?”  Her voice, a chiding.  He would feel shame, but there’s already so much of it.  Tip of the thumb against her bottom lip.  Eyes count the freckles across her nose.  She’s so delicate.  How can she be so deadly too?  He nearly says he loves her.  It’s too soon.  He’s too – not.  Nothing like a grey warden.  Nothing at all.  The sounds of soldiers, mages, templars – they are all distant.  They are alone, but not alone, here, and I – feel hope.  Even when there’s everything to lose, everything to gain, there can still be _this_.

            “You’re beautiful.”  Her eyes like the winter sky see right through him.  That’s how she says the three words he’s afraid to.  He came here to mend her heart, but she mends his without thinking.  He’s – touching her now.  His forehead against hers.  _Them_ , against the world.

            I leave them then.  Some things are for two hearts, not three.  I already know too much.

            I don’t want to hurt them.


	6. vi.

There’s an eye in the storm, away from Adamant, away from the game in Orlais.  Skyhold cast under a spell, bated breaths, bated hearts  …  she keeps herself busy, scraped knees on the rocks in the green graves.  The Freemen broken asunder, cracking like brittle bone beneath her spirits and wisps.  They fear her, all of us, until we don’t.  Until she is in the courtyard, breathless laughing, Sera pinching her elbow.  He watches her, his heart full and forlorn.  Anyone could see it, if they wanted to.  His faraway eyes.  The taken frown that never leaves.  Varric sees.  Varric always sees.  Even though there is sadness still inside of him, he smiles, and he is – sad, for Blackwall too.

            “Any intentions with Clouds over there?”  His tone, light, like he’s asking for the estimation of the weather.  The warden, but not warden, doesn’t hear him coming.  His breath catches, cold like snowflakes in his throat.  He doesn’t want anyone to know, but they must.  He hasn’t been careful.  Neither has she.  His hands clasp, clammy, before his stomach.  “Intentions?”  Play daft, and maybe Varric will laugh; switch his focus.  Varric doesn’t laugh.

            “ _Intentions._   The kind that has you going to her bedchambers in the middle of the night.”  Wry smile, wry tone.  He realises Varric isn’t judging.  It’s – concern.  Somehow, that’s worse.  “You know what you’re doing, don’t you?  Making pretty eyes at the _herald of Andraste?_ ”  Pretty eyes, like hers, when the sun meets her winter and melts him in his place.  No.  It’ll show on his face.  He mustn’t think of that.

            “I respect her.  She’s a remarkable woman.”  A safe answer, but he already knows safe never works.  The dwarf reads pages, between pages, between lines.  The storytellers are the ones you can’t deceive.  His laugh spills out Blackwall’s secrets, a barrel of daggers knocked to its side.

            “That’s an understatement.”  He looks at the herald too.  She’s plotting mischief with Sera, and the spark in her eye brings her the youth that she’s lost so rapidly.  “You almost forget, besides being the herald, she comes from a remarkable family.  _Nobles._   Never want to hedge your bets on them.”

            “Who says I’m hedging any bets?”

            “Oh, _I_ am.  And it’s daring.  A lonesome grey warden and the daughter of house Trevelyan?  I could write a few novels on that.”  His eyes, a cloud passing through them like he calls her, like he sees the storm that hangs over the crown of her head.  “I know how it goes too.  How these things tend to end.”

            Blackwall bristles.  He already knows, and he knows _worse_ than Varric ever could.  Hopefully ever would.  “You don’t need to lecture me.  I’m well aware.”

            “I’m just wondering if _she_ is.”

            It’s concern, but it’s not for him – it’s for her.  A blossoming friendship, a tender glance to the woman who became _more_ than a woman.  He promised himself he would never hurt her, but Varric sees the cracks that he tries to forget.  Maybe he knows more, after all.  Wise, older, like the things of the earth no-one ever speaks of on the surface.  He might have left the Deep Roads behind, but he carries their melancholy.  Her brown hair, almost red, not quite red, spins in the air.  She doesn’t see them.  Doesn’t care.  It’s so rare, to see her not care.  Her laughter is his calling, where he doesn’t hear the Calling.

            “She’s smarter than you give her credit for.”  But he doesn’t sound as certain as he did before.  Not so gruff, deflective.  Varric sees the break, then he hesitates.  He reaches out; pats the man on his arm.

            “I know she is.  I also know she’s – well, fragile.  Aren’t we all, in some way?”  His smile says sorry, and his eyes too.  Blackwall can’t look into them.  “Just be on your guard in case her family starts sending assassins.  I’ve been there too, you know.”

            Before he can ask, so many questions roiling beneath the surface, Varric steps away.  He sways with confidence, but – we’re all fragile, in some way.  Aren’t we?


	7. interlude

_He did it for me._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	8. vii.

Wicked eyes and wicked hearts.  The crushed velvet looks good against her skin, in some lights green, in some lights blue.  Silver crystals across her throat, hair still left tumbling – her one act of defiance where she must be pretty, look pretty, _speak_ pretty.  The Great Game is afoot, and if she must be anything, she will not be the doe caught upon the point of the hunter’s lance.  He, always a step or two behind, admires her – the scent of sea spray that is caught in her dark brown curls.  Beside her, step matching step, is Gaspard de Chalons.  Ser Robert with the tinkle of gold in his palm.  No, he must not think of that.  He keeps his head held low, but he imagines the wicked eyes that pierce into his back.  Shave off the beard, the hair a little more tamed.  Once he too danced between the masks, the glitter of a glutton, the pride of an arrogant lion.

            Fool.  _Fool._   The Grand Duke de Chalons is right _there_.  What is he doing?  What will he do?  Why did she bring him to the viper’s nest?  She turns her head so slightly, the crystals shifting at her throat.  She catches his eye.  There is no smile – her face has been set in determination from the moment they arrived – but there is a promising twinkle.  A whisper that he can’t hear, but he can make out the words if he imagines them.

            For her.  He’s here for _her_.

            Accomplishments like trumpets as he takes careful mark into the empress’ view, but they aren’t his own.  How many in the crowd can pick him out?  How many will keep it to themselves, to use for blackmail against the Inquisitor?  She walks ahead of him, distant yet close to the grand duke.  She doesn’t know, but if she did – his stomach turns.  Face like stone, yes.  He must be like her, if only for the evening.  He must make the theatre troupes of Orlais weep with pride.  Just this one evening.  Just to get through it, to feel her hand in his again.

            Maya Balsitch of Korsch is announced.  The Inquisitor nearly trips upon her step, his throat catches with a laugh.  The flicker of hope, burning small at the far end of the night.

            There is no expense spared when playing the Great Game.  They shift easily in and out of the ballroom, into the vestibule, by the trophy room door, where he admires the sculptures with his arms crossed neatly to his heart.  A man approaches him, recognition on his brow.  His heart near ceases.  He is rescued by the light touch of her hand upon his arm.  The man hesitates, then inclines his head and leaves the lovers be.  _Lovers._   Will that be used against her too?  Will he only ever be a dark mark upon her radiance?

            “Save a dance for me.”  Her breath tickles his ear.  He wants nothing more than to sweep her from this place, one that she detests near to, if not more than, he.  Nowhere has she appeared more the Trevelyan girl.  He wonders if the emptiness behind her eye comes from something other than boredom.  He turns his head to her, his nose brushing her cheek.

            “All of them.”  Her heart skips.  A crescent smile, then it’s – gone.

            It’s not _their_ dance that becomes the talk of the evening.  It is the Grand Duchess of Chalons, then, that sweeps her to the floor.  The Inquisitor’s steps are graceful.  He notices all the elegant curves, the high delicate arches of her feet and her arms that have him shift in place, blushing, of all things.  He didn’t know she could dance so well, but he should have.  They both have – _lives_ that came before.  Lives that asked for that and more.  Between every whispered praise, she steals more secrets.  Gathers them to her.  Her head bows conspiratorially near the elven ambassador’s.  She is remarkable at this, he thinks.  She hates this so much, yet none could do it better.  The empress, the grand duke, the ambassador – all strings that dance between _her_ fingers.  By the end of the evening, she has reunited lovers.  An elven locket hidden in the empress’ vault.  The same grand duke he once performed for cast to the gallows.  The grand duchess’ remains in a sealed wood crate.  What would she think of him if she knew?  What does everyone else know?  He flees, and – she flees too.  Her silhouette against the night sky, elbows on the balustrade.  The talk of Halamshiral alone, away, within his reach at last.

            He can’t help but to go to her.  The empress’ apostate casts him a sideways glance as she leaves the Inquisitor’s side.  The corner of her mouth twitches up.  She knew, but – how much does she _know_?  His steps quicken.  Lillith looks up to him, eyes as silver as the crystals on her throat.  A slender throat, its radius the circumference of his palm, where his thumb will always fall square on her heart.  She looks  …  tired.  He wants to ask what they did to her, all of them.  The court, the game, the family that put her in silks and taught her to dance like a grand duchess could.  He offers her his hand instead – a last dance, but if she says no, he’d be happier just to pull her to him.  To caress her hair and whisper that she need never wear a mask.

            _Hypocrite._

            She takes his hand, sways near to him.  The sea foam perfume, and the hint of something sweet.  It makes him think of soft, crumbling pastries, zest on the tongue.  “Where did you learn to dance like this?” she asks.  A soft and playful jibe.  To her, he is the warden in the woods, backwards, quaint but charming.  If he was _really_ Blackwall, it might have insulted him.  Lives before lives.  They spin silently on the balcony of Halamshiral, the stars their only witness.  He bends his mouth to her throat and she falls into him, her head tilted back.  The dance forgotten but for their hearts.

            When the hours tip into morning, they share cups of wine together.  Her skin blushes beneath her freckles; his palms throb from their brief touches with a sweet ache.  He talks less and less, and she notices that too.  He pictures the grand duke in a cell.  He pictures the cell where he belongs.  Her fingertips draw across his cheek.  Nothing like a grey warden.  She knows, but she doesn’t want to know.  She doesn’t want him to _make_ her know.  The stables of Skyhold are a different fare from the halls of Halamshiral.  She still wears her crushed velvets with grace, until he parts them from her flesh one by one by one.

            “I can never be what you deserve – ”

            She silences him, a twist of her legs around his hips, her mouth hard against his.  There is no future, there is no past.  There can only ever be _now_.


	9. viii.

_He did it for me._   She doesn’t know if that makes it easier.  He wrote that if he had stayed, it would have hurt more, but would it?  Couldn’t they both have pretended, written a different story for only _their_ eyes to see?  Leliana watches her with pity, holding the papers on Thom Rainier between her fingers.  Behind the pity are a thousand other thoughts, plots, schemes.  Lillith’s heartache is just a blink across her brow.  Across the _Inquisition’s_ brow.  Josephine says they whisper.  The man she loves warms a cell in Val Royeaux, awaiting execution.

            _He did it for me._   It doesn’t make it easier.

            He – left in the middle of the night, leaving her naked in the straw, his handwriting for her trouble.  She woke to a half apology, a burning need for the man to make things right.  A burning heartbreak, for her, but she is only a girl.  The herald, but still a girl.  She scolds herself for hours before the messenger finds her to bring her to Leliana.  Pity.  Softness in the spymaster, but she never knows any more if it’s concocted or genuine.  She leans toward the former, but maybe she’s only cynical.

            “Did he say anything at all?” Leliana tries to ask kindly.  She has all the details in her hand.  The execution for Mornay.  How he stood and declared the man innocent – that _he_ was Thom Rainier, and _he_ deserved death.  Lillith stares at her.  She wants to scream, fill her lungs with the black air between the cold stones and just – scream.

            “It doesn’t need to be like this,” Leliana tries again.  She sets down the paper, a whisper of the chain links over her garb.  Tendrils of blood red hair bending over a marble brow.  “I have contacts.  Ways of getting him back from Val Royeaux that will leave little ties to us.  Oh, people will talk of course.  That is unavoidable.  But they will not have proof.”  Her eyes burn into the girl, weighing up each reaction, each lean toward any decision.  Lillith swallows.  She feels little again, grass stains on her skirt, father watching from a high window.  Like she watched Blackwall – no, _Rainier_ – through the bars of his cell.  She has seen him like this before, in the future that never was.  _He did it for me._   This isn’t what she wanted.  After the bars comes death, then and now.  She’s tried so hard.  Worked so hard.  This shouldn’t be happening.

            “Inquisitor?” Leliana whispers.  She has known the herald to be a hard girl, near cold as the snows of Haven.  A means to an end, always towards the end.  She doesn’t know what to do with the heartbreak.  How to address it.  When she reaches out a hand, Lillith stirs.

            “Josephine mentioned that, after Halamshiral, Celene would be favourable toward releasing him to us directly.”

            Leliana pulls her hand back, to business.  “She would also be favourable to looking the other way should Rainier  …  _disappear_ under mysterious circumstances.  Josephine is correct, of course, but the whole world would be watching what you use your power for.  They will know your weakness.  They already talk.”

            “And they will talk more, only it’ll be – speculation.  They’ll know.”

            “That is the difference.  Would you rather the whole world _know_ , or speculate?”

            _He did it for me._   He won’t like the lengths she goes to pry him loose, to pry him back to her.  He has chosen his fate.  His atonement through death.  She swallows back the lump in her throat, feeling smaller in her seat the more Leliana watches her.  Is this the herald of Andraste, undone by a single man?

            “Tell me more,” she hears herself say, “about your contacts.”

 

_She did it for me._   In the night he slipped away from her side, and in the night they hook their hands beneath his elbows and slip him from the cell.  He has barely slept, guilt and dread wracking him through every hour.  He wonders if he dreams this all, before he recognises their garb.  Leliana’s agents.  The Inquisition, retrieving him.  His heart twists in his chest.  Why for him?  Why for Rainier, when it was _Blackwall_ that she loved?

            He did this to her.  Hurt her, put her in a position no-one would envy.  He knows Skyhold must echo with the whispers.  Halamshiral too.  They will know that the herald fell in love with a liar, a scoundrel, a murderer.  A thief of names, of identity – children’s blood seeping between his fingers, his own only worthy to decorate the gallows.  Why?  Why do this for him, after he has hurt her so?  Hurt so many?

            He remembers how she looked down at him through the bars, her eyes ice.  Her lips pressed together so tight to hold back the screams, the anger, the blood from her heart.  He would have deserved it.  Deserved to be laid bare and humiliated.  She didn’t.

            _She did it for me._

            Skyhold under cover of night, black velvet on the pale stone.  Black velvet on pale skin.  She waits for him by the gates, torchlight setting her hair afire to its underlying red.  Her eyes hard and glittering, lips pressed together again like before the bars, when she played the woman but felt the girl.  His eyes are – heavy, hard to meet with hers.  She did it for him, but now they are one like the other.  Criminals, shirking the law.  She was sacred, but he made her like him.  Phantom blood, staining the palms of his hands.

            Nothing to say.  Nothing to think.  The agents release his arms, and he kneels before her.  It feels right.  She has always held the high ground, he thought.  She has always been better than him, he thought.  The light from the torch seems to expose them both to their bone.  _He did it for me.  She did it for me._

            “I’m no better than you,” she tells him.  She never was.


	10. ix.

Skyhold is made of whispers.  Whispers in the Herald’s Rest, whispers in the hall before Andraste’s throne, the gold flames circling her upturned face.  Whispers in the library, in the kitchens – I hear them where I am, and I hear them where I’m not.  Whispers by the prison door, the guards bending their heads close.  He has done a terrible thing.  He must _pay_.  Some still call him ‘the warden’ before they catch themselves.  The papers on Thom Rainier are tucked under Leliana’s candle stub.  She watches the whispers out of her high window, wondering what next is to come.

            Lillith doesn’t _want_ a show.  She wants silence, privacy.  She gave that right away the moment Divine Justinia sent her from the Fade.  They want answers, even though she already has hers.  Josephine presses her.  The man should be put on trial, even if he _has_ avoided justice.  The whispers are angry.  The ambassador hears them through the cracks in her door, and her quill hurries across the parchment to distract.  Dislike and sympathy.  The nobles find it romantic.  Sera hurls arrows at her door, brooding because the herald broods, the taste of half-baked cookies stale on her tongue.

           I – he _hurt_ them.  The children last, their eyes wide, fixed.  He gave the order, but he might as well have wielded the blade.  He atones through another man’s name.  I don’t understand it, but I understand that he hurts.  I understand that she hurts.  To make things hurt less, he made them hurt _more_ – I can understand that, but he can’t make them forget.  He can’t try again.  He only gets _one_ try.

            He sits in a new cell, alone.  She doesn’t visit him, but they bring him to her throne, a put-upon show.  Masked faces and unmasked watch.  _She_ the judge, but the judged too.  Her fingers coil like thin white snakes across the gilded arms.  Josephine reads out the charges, voice faltering.  She can’t look him in the eyes, not the noble, romantic grey warden she thought he was.  The herald stares over his head, her lips pressed thin, throat _full_ of all the things she hasn’t said.  He holds his breath.  Gallows left behind, but  …  this is the end of something, the end of him with her.  Rather the gallows than this emptiness in his chest.  I watch from the balcony overhead, tasting the copper at the back of his throat and the iron between her teeth.

            He makes no defence.  What defence is there?  They know what he’s done.  _She_ knows what he’s done.  Her gaze moves down.  Behind the beard is an officer’s face, the bright eyes of ambition faded to tiredness.  She used to love tracing the bones of his cheeks, how highly set, lean from years of  …  what?  What has he been, for years?

            She sets him free before the crowds that watch.  The crowds that will hear on the wind the Inquisitor’s judgement, unofficial, away from the jury of Val Royeaux.  His heart stops, waits for the catch.  She sets him free.  Atone as _Rainier_ , not as Blackwall.  She sets him free, and there are no shackles to bind him.  The hall is silent.  Then – murmurs.  This is how she uses her power, the girl herald, in love, blinded not by the Maker’s faith, but by him.  The pretender.  He hears them, their low coarse voices.  He steps forward, to save her from herself.

            _She_ lists his virtues, his accomplishments as _Blackwall_ , and not Rainier.  The blood, the sweat, the _tears_ shed for the Inquisition’s cause.  She speaks of the man that she knows, noble, not a warden, always nothing _like_ a warden, but with a proud griffon’s heart.  She stands from her throne, slight, easily swallowed by its size, yet standing apart.  He is two steps below her, their heads nearly equal.  The bold fool, standing at _her_ height, during _his_ trial – the murmurs still, but quieter.  Varric hasn’t moved from his table.  His eyes are sad, and he doesn’t need the parchment to remember the story.

            Another step.  She bends her head to his.  Andraste had Maferath, the betrayer, but he has only betrayed himself, and she – let her betray herself too, _knowing_.  Nothing like a grey warden, but it wasn’t a grey warden that she loved.  She knows that, in his shoes, she would have hidden for all her life, just as she’s hidden all her life in the Circle, head bowed, don’t notice the _quiet girl_   …  but they love her anyway, but they don’t love _him_.  He could have stayed, _kept_ his name, never spoken of his past.  Always pretended.  He _could have_ , but he didn’t.

            “’Tis most curious, love’s touch upon our history.”  The empress’ apostate stands beside me, soft as a shadow.  I – didn’t hear her footsteps.  “It makes bastards, betrayals, _fatal_ errors – all of which would give cause for a different world had they not occurred.”  Eyes yellow like a prowling cat’s.  She seems amused, like the hall before her is a ball of yarn.  “One need wonder if this is for good, or if, forsaking errors of passion, we might leave our children to inherit a _better_ Thedas.”  Fingernails tap on the balustrade.  She looks to me, into me, _through_ me – but she sees me, and she will remember me, like they do.  She knows all the things that she shouldn’t, and all the things that she was never allowed.  “What do you think, spirit?  Or, dare I say, not a spirit – not in _truth_.  Something more or less, depending on who might be asked.  Is that a girl who has shown her weakness to the world, her _greatest_ enemies, revealing the stilted corruption that will lay the Inquisition to dust once Corypheus’ threat has passed  …  or has she set an example that will make for a better future?  One of forgiveness, of love despite flaws.  A mage and a murderer, _oft_ cursed in the same breath.”

            Examples.  Always looked to for examples, but all her decisions come from the heart.  That was not the herald of Andraste that set him free, but the girl who is in love.  All she has ever wanted to be is herself, and she _dares_ , in the seat of one who is not she.  If the magisters broke into the Black City to claim the Maker’s throne, then she must have broken into _here_ – and all make claims _for_ her.  Not her.  She’s never claimed to be Andraste’s chosen.

            “It doesn’t matter what she _claims_.  _I_ could claim to be the empress of Orlais, but I scarce believe Celene would forgive such brashness even from mine own tongue.  It is _belief_ that makes the truth – that makes the written history.  A man from Tevinter could look to a constellation in the sky and name it to be one thing, while an elf from across the world would call it another.  The truth shifts to their belief.”  She blinks, and the hall focuses in her gaze.  The judged and the jury, both.  “We two are fortunate to see things in their occurrence.  To witness the truth before others speak it.  You did not answer me, however – unless that _was_ your manner of expressing sympathy?”

            He hurt many, but he _hurts_.  She hurts as well, even if she is – wrong.  And she knows she is wrong.  She knows that if she did not love him  …

            “Then he would still be in Val Royeaux, left to rot like the Calliers.”  Almost a smile, but she does not betray it.  “ _I_ think it is well.  They should know she is only a girl – _not_ Andraste’s chosen.  The power would crush her.  Best that it be taken from her grasp once there is no more need for it – and they _will_ take it.  Hear how they whisper?”

            I do.  I do.  They whisper too.  Later, later.  Speak later.  Honesty later.  Love, later.

            Not one better than the other, but both flawed.  And that is alright.  Neither were chosen, except for each other.


End file.
